Bush Accepts Major Military Budget Cuts

March 18, 1990|By N.Y. Times News Service

WASHINGTON — Faced with widespread pressure from Congress and elsewhere, the Bush administration has decided to retreat on the 1991 military budget and accept cuts almost as large as those that lawmakers are urging, senior government officials say.

With no changes in programs, inflation would push next year's budget to $306 billion.

In January the administration proposed cutting $3.2 billion from that baseline. Now the officials say the administration has decided to accept a reduction about triple that.

Such a cut, $10 billion or $11 billion, would mean that the Pentagon would have to absorb the costs of inflation, since the dollar level of spending would be about the same as this year's.

The decision comes as a critical development in an unfolding debate about the strategic goals and proper spending levels for the armed forces in the new era inaugurated by the virtual collapse of the Warsaw Pact as a military entity.

As such, the debate, though still unfocused, has provided a first opportunity to see how changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe may affect the shape of U.S. military and budget policy.

For the coming year, sentiment among congressional Democrats, as well as some Republicans, appears to be coalescing around a reduction of $12 billion or possibly $13 billion from the baseline figure of $306 billion - 1990 military outlays of $296 billion plus about $10 billion in inflation and previously committed projects.

All the savings would go toward meeting the deficit-reduction target set forth in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law.

Senior officials said in recent interviews that the administration was ready to acquiesce in a reduction of nearly the size the lawmakers are proposing, realizing that it would have to give considerable ground to win congressional approval.

In the longer term, there is no such consensus on how much the nation should spend for the armed forces and on what.

But William W. Kaufmann of Harvard University, a consultant to defense secretaries in Republican and Democratic administrations, has said military spending could safely be halved by the year 2000, and while a few politicians, generals and theorists have expressed alarm about that figure, Rep. Les Aspin of Wisconsin, the centrist Democrat who heads the House Armed Services Committee, said, "I don't dispute it."

But in the rush to slash military spending, attention is only now turning to the overarching question of how the armed forces should be organized in the future to address present and potential threats like nuclear terrorism originating in smaller countries, the drug trade, Soviet strategic weapons, and limited wars.

President Bush had proposed a cut of about $3.2 billion in 1991 outlays, to $303 billion.

But that figure has been dismissed in recent days as far too small, even by Republican conservatives like Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and by experts on military spending like Lawrence J. Korb of the Brookings Institution, who served as assistant secretary of defense for manpower in the Reagan administration.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is still fighting the emerging consensus that 1991 outlays should be held to about $296 billion, or even a little less, and Bush's reported conclusion that he has little choice but to go along.

"If the cuts are at that level, and it looks as if they are going to be," Cheney said in a telephone interview, "then there's going to be real trouble."

But domestic budgetary and political questions are at work in the debate, as well as issues of grand strategy and weaponry, and Cheney appears to be playing a less signifcant role than Richard G. Darman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

"The guy who's driving this train is Darman," said Korb.

"Bush will catch up, after he's calmed down the right wing, but Cheney won't."

By proposing the $11 billion figure, the administration could be trying to forestall the larger cut and avoid the congressional gridlock.

Reductions in actual outlays can be achieved quickly only by cutting categories like personnel strength and training and maintenance, and this is why Cheney is nervous about them.

Cuts in spending on new weapons systems take longer to bite, because much of the spending has already been authorized.

Setting the overall spending level is easier than deciding exactly what to cut, and that is easier than forcing those cuts through Congress.

All weapons are made in someone's district and most troops contribute to some local economy, so getting votes in particular is harder than getting them in general.

"At that point, to be blunt, you are dealing with pork, self-interest and local politics," said an administration official.

Sen. Jim Sasser, D-Tenn., said his plan would cut three active Army divisions, from 18 to 15, as opposed to 16 in the administration's initial proposal. He would also eliminate two of 36 tactical fighter wings and one of 14 aircraft carrier battle groups.